


Fiddler Cat

by dragonofdispair



Series: Transformers Fantasy AU Novels/Novellas [6]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Child Abuse, Child Character/POV, Child Labor, Fairies and Fey, Fairytale AU. Fairytale, Fantasy AU, Gen, Past Rape/Non-con, Platonic Relationships, Slavery, baby Prowl is a bug, but not of the underage character!!, he’s an adorable bug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22218715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: As a hatchling slave, Prowl's life is pretty miserable but he sneaks out at night to collect trash and treasures. He finds a cat.
Series: Transformers Fantasy AU Novels/Novellas [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/757134
Comments: 89
Kudos: 97





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rizobact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/gifts).



> For Riz, who never gave up on this story and bugged me to finish it for over two years.
> 
> Beta'd by Rizobact.

.

.

.

Master Swindle was a very busy mech. Prowl knew he was because Barricade said so. Barricade was Master Swindle’s apprentice — his favorite apprentice! — so Prowl supposed he would know how busy Master Swindle was.

Master Swindle had four apprentices. Barricade was the only one who didn’t stay with Master Swindle; he came in every morning after the chores were done, then left before evening chores were done. Barricade was the only one who ever seemed to be taught anything. All Prowl was ever taught was that he’d be whipped if he didn’t do what he was told. Tiny little parasites like Prowl didn’t need to learn anything; they just had to be grateful kind mechs were willing to feed and house younglings like them. Maybe Master Swindle would teach Prowl something when he stopped being so dumb.

Prowl didn’t like Master Swindle. He was mean. Prowl knew he wouldn’t be whipped so much if he weren’t so clumsy, but that didn’t make Master Swindle any less mean.

Being tired made him more clumsy (which led to more whippings) but it was worth it to sneak out. Not often. Bluestreak was older than Prowl (old enough that he only had two legs!), but he was still a cry-hatchling and didn’t always sleep through the night, and if he woke up screaming then Master Swindle would come and check on them and if Prowl wasn’t there, he would get worse than whipped. And Smokescreen was a tattle-tale. So Prowl had to be careful and only sneak out through the little secret hole under the cabinet sparingly. 

He hadn’t been able to sneak out recently anyway. In his clumsiness, he had dropped a… thing. It didn’t even break! But it was still bad. And dumb. And Barricade had been very mad and had stomped on both of Prowl’s left feet and Master Swindle had whipped him, and Prowl hadn’t been able to scurry and climb well enough to get to the secret hole.

But his feet didn’t hurt anymore, and it was late enough that Bluestreak wouldn’t wake up, and Smokescreen had snuck out himself to make weird moaning sounds with the apprentices in the house next door. So tonight was the night!

Prowl scurried on his four legs out of the cold attic where Master Swindle’s apprentices slept. It was really, really dark and Prowl couldn’t see anything. 

It was harder than it used to be to fit under the cabinet. It pressed down on his wing-cases and he resisted the urge to open up the cases and buzz the wings beneath. It felt like being grabbed by Barricade and if he didn’t fly away, Barricade would tear up his wings! Instead, he wiggled himself back and forth, pushing with his legs until he fully flattened against the floor under the cabinet. He continued to struggle until he reached the secret hole. He pushed and pulled until he popped out like the lid on the pressure smelter when Barricade forgot to latch it down all the way. He tumbled aft over antennae, buzzing his wings for some sort of control over his headlong fall until he landed with a thump in the dumpster. 

He had just enough time to be relieved the dumpster was full, so the landing hadn’t hurt much, before the lid slammed down on him. Well, that wasn’t good.

Trapped in a dumpster wasn’t where he would want to be when it was time to go back. He’d get in trouble! But until then, Prowl was not going to worry. Dumpsters weren’t bad places to be, really. Sometimes they had fuel in them!

He couldn’t see as he skittered through the rubbish, but his antennae could sniff out fuel scraps well enough. He found a container of energon that was only slightly curdled and half an energon cookie! A cookie! His first cookie!

He devoured the treat quickly, holding it securely in his pedipalpi while his feeler palpi continually swept his mandibles and the surrounding rubbish for any dropped crumbs.

When he was sure there were no more crumbs he drank the little bit of fuel in the container. It was sour and yucky but it made his tank feel pleasantly full.

Prowl was tempted to spend the night just wiggling through and exploring the dumpster for what other fun things he could find, and he just couldn’t help doing so a bit. He found a blanket scrap! And a… coiled thing that bounced! String! And… Oo! Some tiny little gears! But eventually, he had to admit to himself that he had to turn his attention to getting out of the dumpster. It might be fun and comfy compared to the attic where Master Swindle’s apprentices recharged, but dumpsters were not why he snuck out.

So how to get out? Prowl contemplated this while he wrapped his new treasures in the blanket scrap and tied the bundle to his thorax with the string.

Maybe if he… He pushed, dug, and kicked all the rubbish into a pile on one side of the dumpster and climbed on top, where he pushed as hard as he could on the dumpster’s lid. He pushed and pushed as hard as he could, even though it was hard. He pretended Barricade was watching and that if he stopped to rest, the oldest apprentice was going to hit him across his antennae. So he pushed. 

The rubbish pile slipped right as he saw the crack of the lid opening. His wings buzzed and he threw himself into the crack. He needed to get out!

The lid closed on his thorax, trapping him. Ow. He wiggled, but he was stuck good.

That was dumb. He couldn’t believe he’d done something so dumb, which, of course, he’d done something dumb. He was dumb. Master Swindle and Barricade both said so. 

So he cried. 

Prowl didn’t cry much. Master Swindle didn’t like crying and crying made Barricade meaner. There really was no point in crying. It just made him feel yucky and horrible and his engine hurt with the little fan stutters. His voice went all scratchy too, so he talked in static that made his binary chirps harder for the adults and older instars to understand. He didn’t know why Bluestreak cried so much, but sometimes — like when he was trapped by the lid of a dumpster and couldn’t get free! — he just couldn’t help it. 

He cried, and he cried. He saw the shadows of adults passing the entrance of the alley, but if they heard his sounds of distress, no one came to investigate, except an exceptionally brave glitchmouse, who used the opening where Prowl was stuck to get into the dumpster itself.

When his sobs had faded to static, Prowl just hung there, exhausted. He was going to get in trouble, he just knew it.

That was how he saw the… the poky thing! It was blurry, but it was definitely a poky thing, lying on the ground at the base of the dumpster below him.

Wiggling excitedly again, Prowl pulled his bundle of treasures around himself until he could untie the sloppy knots he’d managed. He let the gears and the scrap of mesh fall to the ground and concentrated on the coil of bouncy metal. He tied the string to one end and carefully lowered the bouncy thing to the poky thing, trying to catch the poky thing with the biggest coil of metal.

The string wasn’t long enough to catch it on the biggest loop of the bouncy thing, but if he really stretched with his pedipalpi, he could just barely touch the poky thing with one of the smaller loops. It took three tries, but he managed to snag the poky thing!

Then he pulled.

To his horror, the bouncy loop of metal stretched, the irregular coils stretching until it became impossible to keep pulling.

He didn’t let go though. If he let go he would lose his coiled thing and his string in addition to being stuck here forever and ever. They were his! So he pulled, trying to get the poky thing to let go!

Something let go, and it wasn’t the poky thing.

Suddenly pulled loose from the dumpster’s lid by the spring’s recoil, Prowl went flying with a high-pitched squawk. Automatically, his wings buzzed trying to right him, but he was going too fast and he smacked into the far wall of the alley, where he fell to the ground. Ow.

Disoriented, he shook his head. His optics felt all wonky, and there were weird squiggles scrolling across his vision. He tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Prowl swept his feeler palpi down his body trying to figure out what was wrong. 

Oh! He was on his back! That’s why he couldn’t get up.

He flicked one of his wing-cases open to roll himself over and stood there on his four shaky feet. His optics finally rebooted and he took his first good look at the alley. It was blurry and dark, but the light and moving shapes outside the alley were tempting things for a curious hatchling to investigate. As long as he was careful.

He scurried to the entrance and looked around. It was much brighter and noisier than it usually was. Adults drove around in their alt forms, and a little bit like Prowl had to avoid them, so he stuck close to the buildings. He knew that if he went right, he would stay in the shop district where people may recognize him and return him to Master Swindle and get him in trouble, so he didn’t want to go there. And to the left was where most of the bright and noise seemed to be coming from anyway. Prowl wanted to know what that was about. He turned left.

Hugging the wall and following the noise brought him to a plaza with lots of bright lights. Sooo many lights. And nice sounds. The sounds were coming from the center of a crowd of adults, which meant Prowl couldn’t see what was making the sounds and if he tried to get close enough to see he would probably get stepped on. So he scurried around the edge of the plaza to try and find a vantage point. He found a pile of boxes stacked up next to a building at the mouth of a very thin alley, so thin that it was just filled with trash because an adult couldn’t fit in there. Prowl saw several mechanimals digging through it to find fuel.

Prowl was torn between staying on his boxes and listening to the pretty sounds (his antennae were already swaying), or joining the mechanimals in the alley to look for fuel. 

Eventually, the lure of something to eat (especially maybe another cookie!) proved too great and he scurried down to look through the trash himself.

Prowl saw a pack of turbo dogs. They were very interested in something. He wanted to go see because maybe it was fuel, but the dogs were scary. Each was at least twice as big as he was, with tattered armor plates and mean optics. Prowl decided to look somewhere else for fuel, sweeping the nearby rubbish with his feeler palpi to taste out anything edible.

Until he heard the shriek of feline distress. 

The dogs were growling and one had lunged for a tattered thin cybercat, who was fending it off with its claws. Oh no!

Prowl was not built for picking things up, carrying them, or moving anything heavy. He had heard once, clinging upside down beneath a chair listening to Master Swindle and some guests talk, that hatchlings were built for exploring. He didn’t know if it was true or not, but just in case it was true, Prowl explored whenever he could. 

Exploring didn’t help him against a pack of turbodogs!

Awkwardly he flew back to the boxes stacked at the entrance and grappled with the top one. Clinging to it with his legs and his pedipalpi and even his feeler palps and antennae, he pulled it, trying to drop it on the dogs.

He succeeded in pulling it, but it was too heavy for him to carry and he ended up just pulling it over, toppling the whole pile and spilling the contents with a giant crash. A box landed on top of Prowl.

“Oh no! My shipment!” An adult ran out of a nearby door on his two powerful feet, waving his arms at the dogs. “You mangy mutts! Get the frag away from my stuff.” The adult threw things at the dogs and they ran away. “Now who’s going to clean up this mess!” he yelled as the last of the mechanimals vacated the alley.

Not Prowl! He had enough messes to clean up at Master Swindle’s.

As soon as the mech had walked away yelling for his slaves, Prowl wiggled from beneath the box and deeper into the trash-filled alley.

Which turned into a network of alleys! Fun! He avoided the adult sleeping in one and scurried around looking for something to play with. He found a box of greasy chamois! That was better than a blanket scrap! And a dirty sponge! And a spool of ribbon with a whole metron of mesh string left on it! To his feeler palpi it tasted like just plain tin mesh, but it was still pretty! And Prowl flew in awkward zig zags and listened to it whip around behind him, which was fun!

But Prowl was getting tired. He didn’t want to go back to Master Swindle’s, but he had to. At least he had some nice soft chamois! And a piece of sponge! 

He put all his treasures into a box and using his stronger back legs, pushed the box across the ground. He didn’t want to go back out the alley he’d come from, with the mess and the mech and the mech’s slaves cleaning up, so he pushed the box down a really dark alley hoping it would put him back closer to Master Swindle’s.

It was harder to hide from the adults while pushing a box. It was dumb to think he could. But a box of dirty chamois was such a great prize he had to try! He was still going in the right direction (he thought, maybe… or maybe not) when he was forced to dive into the box and wiggle down into the greasy cloth because it was the only place to hide when someone came to investigate.

“What’s this box of trash doing out here?” the mech said, picking it up. Prowl trembled. This was NOT GOOD! “Bleh… disgusting.”

The mech started walking and Prowl worried about where he was carrying the box. He needed to get back to Master Swindle’s!

Prowl heard the bangs and thumps through his feeler palpi and antennae an instant before the box was upended and unceremoniously dumped out and—

—the lid of a dumpster slammed down over him. Well, at least he knew how to get out of it this time.

When he’d piled all the trash to one side of the dumpster so he could reach the lid and pushed it up, he let out a surprised squawk and leaped away from the bright glowing optic peering at him. There was a monster outside! He tumbled down his pile to the bottom of the dumpster where he was left waving his feet in the air but with no room to open his wing cases and flip himself back over.

He wiggled back and forth and had just managed to twist and grab the side of the dumpster with his tarsomeres, hooking the claws of his pretarsals to cracks in the metal, when the lid opened on its own.

A blue optic band peered down at Prowl. “Mew?”

Oh! It was the cat!

Excitedly Prowl pulled himself upright and scurried back up the mound of rubbish to where the cybercat was holding the dumpster lid open and scuttled out, tumbling to the ground. The cat let the lid fall and landed next to Prowl, much more gracefully. They looked at each other, optics to optic band.

“Mew?” the cat said again.

“Hello Cat,” Prowl beeped back.

“Mew,” the cat said and rubbed its head against his pedipalpi. Prowl flexed his mandibles and buzzed his wings excitedly. Best treasure ever!

.

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.

It took several trips, going out through the hole under the cupboard and coming in through the chimney, for Prowl to get all his treasures into the House and tucked away in the attic. The chimney was too slick at the bottom, even for the tiny graspers on Prowl’s feet to find purchase, to climb up, but was fine for coming down, especially when he could send a ball of chamois down first to land on. 

Prowl’s bed was little more than a box as it was. But that was okay. A box on the floor was better than being on the floor-floor, like Smokescreen and Bluestreak.

Cat followed him and jumped into the box as Prowl scuttered over the side to arrange everything comfortably. It flexed its claws, pawing at the scraps that made up Prowl’s bed, then settled with a flop.

“You’re probably a hungry cat,” Prowl beeped. Cat tilted its head and twitched its audial flaps, listening carefully. “But I don’t have any fuel.”

“Mew,” said Cat, as though to inform Prowl that it was all right.

Cat was a strange cat. It was skinny and obviously under fueled. Its armor was scratches and dents and missing pieces. But that wasn’t the strange thing. The strange thing was that Cat didn’t have a tail. Prowl didn’t know much about mechanimals, or cybercats, but he was pretty sure they always had tails. But Cat didn’t even have a stump where it might have once been attached before losing it in a fight.

Maybe a mean adult like Master Swindle took Cat’s tail?

It didn’t matter. Cat was his now. They were going to sleep together and go exploring and protect each other and be the best of friends.

Snuggling into the mangy, cyberflea-bitten plating, Prowl finally fell in to recharge for the night.

.

.

.

Prowl was being held, gently but firmly in the arms of an adult. Which was wrong. Master Swindle never picked him up unless it was to punish him, and as bad as he was, Prowl didn’t want to be taken by someone else. Someone worse. (He’d heard stories! When Smokescreen didn’t think he was listening, about places worse than Master Swindle’s, where they took hatchlings like Prowl just to hurt them.) He wiggled and struggled to get away.

He couldn’t bite very well with his mandible, but fortunately, when he tried, the unknown adult released him and Prowl scuttled under the nearest surface to hide.

He braced himself for the adult’s anger, but instead, he heard a rich, warm chuckle. The adult just lay down on the floor so he could look under the whatever this thing was. The corner of a fanged mouth curled up in an amused smile under a blue visor almost as large as Prowl himself was. 

“Hey little bit,” the unknown adult said gently. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya. Can’t, in fact.” He tugged a thin, shiny yellow chain attached to a shinier yellow band around his neck. Twitching his pedipalpi nervously, Prowl followed the chain with his optics from the band around the mech’s neck to a tiny (also shiny) yellow band around Prowl’s left front leg. Eeeeek! Get it off!

Instead of using the chain to drag Prowl out from under the whatever-this-is, the strange adult just watched him struggle. He couldn’t pull it off and he couldn’t break it off and he couldn’t bite it off… Panic tired him out and he eventually lay there, fruitlessly gnawing on the chain. 

“Shhh…” the mech soothed. “What’s got ya worried about it?”

“Can’t hide,” Prowl beeped around his mandibles-full of chain.

“Well I can’t pull you out of there by it, so does it matter if I know where you are?”

Prowl thought about that. Because that’s what he’d thought. The mech was so much bigger than him, undoubtedly he could pull tiny little Prowl out of whatever crack he was hiding in easily. “Show,” he demanded.

With another chuckle, the mech picked up the chain again. “It’s a magic chain,” he said seriously. “You can pull me,” automatically Prowl did so, yanking the bit of chain in his mouth and interrupting the mech as he was jerked forward by the band around his neck and bumped his helm-bumps against the edge of Prowl’s hiding place. “Ow. If yer gonna do that, could you, I don’t know, NOT be under things?”

“Sorry,” Prowl beeped.

“As I was saying,” the mech continued, “you can pull me, but,” he picked up a handful of chain and gave it a similar sharp yank; Prowl didn’t feel any sort of pull at all. “I can’t pull you. Besides,” the mech said, flopping over on his back, “as much as I might wish otherwise — I’d accept being chained up if it meant being me again for real again — this is a dream. So you see, little bit, I can’t hurt you.”

Prowl chewed thoughtfully on the chain, sweeping his feeler palpi down the length of it he could reach — it wasn’t fuel but it tasted surprisingly sweet. 

He looked at the mech laying there on the floor. He was shiny, the shiniest person Prowl had ever seen, with glossy black and white paint and bold blue and red stripes down his chest and not a hint of dust and dirt. Cautiously Prowl crept forward to the edge of his hiding place and swept a feathery feeler palp over the mech’s nearby clawed hand to feel/touch/taste this very strange dream-mech. The mech twitched.

He tasted strange, not like anything Prowl had tasted before. Like strangeness and far away and other.

He was a fey, Prowl decided. And that made him okay. He’d heard stories about fey, how they could be both kind and cruel, but for all their tricks Prowl had never heard of a fey holding down a hatchling and doing the things Smokescreen said other adults did to hatchlings. And if this fey could be cruel, there was also the possibility he would be kind; adult mechs were never kind to Prowl. Worth the risk?

If not, Prowl could come back under the thing and hide again.

Cautiously he crept out of hiding, sweeping his feeler palpi along the mech’s plating as he did so. He saw the fey turn his head to watch him, but he didn’t move. He just let Prowl come out at his own pace. The lack of reaction to his explorations made Prowl brave. He touched the mech, first with his pedipalpi (getting a much stronger flavor of other in the process) then with the tarsomeres of his front legs. The mech twitched violently, which made Prowl jump away, wings buzzing to carry him some distance and he bumped into the thing he’d been hiding under and tumbled back to the floor, where he scurried underneath the thing again.

“Sorry,” the fey said. “Just surprised me. I don’t think I’ve had any’a my dream-partners climb on me before,” the tone of the mech’s voice said that others had tried climbing on him, and he hadn’t liked the experience, “but, just for you, because yer so young, I will totally be yer climbing structure, if you want me to be.”

Prowl regarded the mech. If he didn’t like being climbed on, Prowl wasn’t sure he should. People hit Prowl when he did things they didn’t like, but the fey had also said it would be okay… He crept out of hiding again, a little braver, sweeping the mech’s plating with his feeler palpi to get the shape and flavor of him, antennae alert for any change in air currents that would indicate the fey was going to be violent. 

This time he didn’t move when Prowl’s tarsomeres touched his abdomen. Prowl crawled in close so he could see the intricate working visible between plates of armor and he cooed at how pretty they were. Like the little gears he’d found in the dumpster earlier. Emboldened further by the fey’s stillness and silence while Prowl examined him, he hooked the claws of his pretarsals onto the glossy black armor and slowly pulled himself up to look at the underside of the mech’s prominent bumper. He could see even more of the mech’s internals from here and swept his feeler palpi across them to get a sense of their shapes as he admired them.

The mech chuckled. “Now… curiosity's a thing I can appreciate. Like what you see, little bit?”

Prowl was too fascinated to use his primitive vocalizer to form binary words, so he simply made an affirmative-gesture with his wing casings.

The mech chuckled again.

Now sure that he really was allowed to do this, and wasn’t going to get punished for it, Prowl scuttered on top of the mech’s bumper to look at the stripes painted down his chest. 

Prowl had never seen colors so bright or touched anything with his feeler palpi that was so smooth. There were no seams or cracks to hook his pretarsal claws into for a good grip so he cautiously crawled out onto the smooth curve of metal gripping only with his tarsomeres. It was an uncertain grip, and as soon as his last leg let go of the mech’s bumper, he slid down the mech’s chest. Scratching for purchase, Prowl spun and tried to catch himself with his tarsomeres, his pedipalpi, even his antennae! But to no effect. He fell, sliding down the expanse of shiny armor, until —

He was caught. He squealed.

“Shh… I ain’t gonna hurt ya, little bit. Just calm down a bit. Here,” the world shifted and swung disorientingly and Prowl’s wings tried to open and buzz to control this headlong flight, but his wing casings were held closed by the mech’s clawed grip. “Here,” the mech repeated, gently putting Prowl down, “how’s this?”

Prowl’s legs splayed out for balance, his tarsomeres and pretarsal hooks digging into this new surface as his feeler palpi and antennae thrashed, trying to understand his new situation. 

He was clinging to something soft and squishy. Rubbery, though it didn’t taste like any rubber Prowl had ever touched before, and he could see-and-touch pretty gears and cables and wires that tasted like the fey’s inner workings under his bumper. But he wasn’t under the mech’s bumper; he could see-and-feel that pretty expanse of bright and smooth plating that was the mech’s chest, though this was an entirely new angle for looking at those stripes. 

The mech chuckled again, the vibrations from his vocalizer very close and carefully Prowl shifted his grip on the soft and squishy to look into the mech’s face right there. He squeaked. 

“Yer on my shoulder,” the fey informed him. One of Prowl’s feeler palpi swept across his lips and fangs, fascinated by the movement and instead of biting down, the fey huffed out a puff of air that had Prowl pulling back slightly. “Good spot? Can see the whole room from here, I bet.”

Prowl chewed thoughtfully on the chain still in his mandibles while he slowly turned to take in his surroundings. It didn’t take him more than klik to take in the whole room and decide that even if his vision weren’t blurry, there was nothing in the room to see. It was empty and grey. The fey was the only interesting thing. So it didn’t matter that Prowl could see all the nothing that was the room, but he could see all of the bright and shiny mech and that was good.

But was his shoulder a good spot?

It probably was. It was easy to cling to and up high. And the fey had fangs and claws so no one would try and take Prowl and whip him while he was on his shoulder. But he could get higher up, couldn’t he? His feeler palpi swept over the mech’s face and helm and yes. There were vents and ridges Prowl could use to climb up.

“Hey—!” the mech exclaimed as Prowl followed an exploratory touch on the vents to the side of his face with the tarsomeres of one pede with a full-on scramble up the mech’s helm until he was perched precariously between the mech’s sensory horns. There was very little to grab, so Prowl wrapped his hind legs around the sensory horns so he could grasp them with his pretarsal hooks, and reached forward with his forelegs to grasp the ridge of the mech’s helm where his optic band attached with his tarsomeres. Feelers and antennae waved around, taking in his new vantage point and touch-tasting the air around him. The vibration of the mech’s chuckle threatened to dislodge him. “There’s a good spot too, I suppose.”

Prowl just chewed on the chain.

“What’s your name, little bit?”

Master Swindle called him stupid and clumsy, but Smokescreen called him a sneaky nuisance. He liked being sneaky much better. “Prowl,” he chirped.

“Pro~wl,” the mech sang. “I like it.” He was silent for a very long moment, the only noise in the empty room the sound of Prowl munching on the thin links of the sparkly yellow chain. “What? Yer not gonna ask me my name?”

“No.”

A laugh. “Well, that’s new. Why not?”

Because the mech had already let him touch/feel/taste him and what else did Prowl need? Names were just sounds. Nothing like the unique taste of strange and far away and other that was the mech in Prowl’s senses. Besides, “You’re fey,” he chittered in binary. “Fey always lie about their names.”

“What a smart little bit!” The words warmed Prowl’s plating. Smart! The dream-fey thought he was smart! 

Cautiously the mech moved around, making pleasant sounds like the plaza with the crowd that Prowl had found. Which was just another way the fey was better than adults: he was making the sounds and Prowl could listen all he wanted without getting stepped on! He cooed in pleasure.

“Ain’t sure what’s making you so happy, little bit,” the mech answered. “This place is boring as slag. Usually, the dreams don’t stay this boring.”

Prowl didn’t know what the mech was talking about; this dream wasn’t boring! It had a pretty, kind fey who let him touch/taste/feel all he wanted! Prowl was going to explore every bit of him! And the moving and sounds were fun! 

“Not boring,” Prowl beeped around the sweet-tasting chain. “Fun.”

“Could be more fun,” the fey coaxed. “Everything’s empty now, but that’s because you aren’t filling it. Just think of something you want and poof!” Prowl slipped from the mech’s helm as he jumped slightly and was caught, gently and firmly as his wings buzzed for control, and now that Prowl wasn’t scared he decided he liked being held by his dream companion, “it’ll appear.” When nothing appeared, because Prowl couldn’t think of anything he wanted more in his dream than the dream-fey who was already here, the mech jostled him slightly, pulling on the chain still in Prowl’s mandibles. “Come on, there’s gotta be something you can think of to make this place better.” Maybe the fey wanted Prowl to imagine something because he was uncomfortable. “What about this berth?” He sat down on a plain grey slab of metal. “Ya conjured it earlier to hide under. Well, now yer not hiding so maybe you want it more comfortable to sleep in?”

Prowl chewed thoughtfully. Did the dream-mech want to sleep? If this was a dream, didn’t that mean they were already asleep?

Maybe fey slept even in dreams. If so, then that slab of metal really did look like an uncomfortable place to recharge!

With a blink, Prowl imagined a nice comfortable, only slightly broken, plastic box filled with greasy chamois and blanket scraps and rags and bits of sponge. It appeared next to them on the slab, big enough for the dream-mech to climb in and sleep if he wanted.

“Seriously?” the mech exclaimed. “THAT’S the most comfortable thing you can think of?”

What was wrong with it? It didn’t even have cyberfleas!

“Well alright. I suppose it’s better than nothing.” Still carrying Prowl, the mech crawled over the side of the box and settled into the rags. “We’ve both slept on worse, I bet. Gonna have to change that. You’ll like that.” Gentle claws stroked over Prowl’s wing casings. “I hope.”

This was a dream, so Prowl wasn’t tired at all. Feeling restless, he peeped out one of the sequences of pitches the fey had before when moving around the room.

In response, the dream-mech made the pleasant sounds again, softly stroking Prowl as he sang. 

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Prowl poked and prodded Cat until it left. If Master Swindle found it, he’d probably kill it and recharging next to the mechanimal, warm and safe, had been the best recharge he’d ever had. He didn’t want Cat to get hurt! Then he went downstairs to do his chores.

Barricade was being especially attentive today. Usually he didn’t notice every time Prowl dropped the push-broom/brush he used to sweep, and Prowl’s antennae and feeler palpi were all very sore before the three younger apprentices were even given breakfast.

The fuel Master Swindle gave them wasn’t soured like the fuel Prowl found in the trash, but it was never enough. Bluestreak and Smokescreen both got bigger shares than Prowl did, but he had learned not to try begging for anything from them. Bluestreak just pulled his cube away and moved away (not fair how he could hold things and walk at the same time!) and Smokescreen would push Prowl away, sometimes to the floor.

All three of them drank their shares quickly. Swindle always gave Barricade something to do when he gave them their energon, but if he finished (or decided one of them could do it better) he would come back and take their energon from them.

Last night’s adventure had left Prowl tired, and more clumsy than usual, which made Master Swindle mad and made Barricade vicious. By the time they were sent back to the attic, Prowl wasn’t sure he could go exploring tonight. He thought longingly about finding a cookie in the dumpster and tried to summon the energy to go looking for one. But he hurt.

He wondered as he arranged his scraps (some were missing; he suspected Smokescreen had stolen them but he didn’t go digging around his bed to check) if Cat would come back. He lost most of his treasures, but he hoped Cat would stay with him for a while. He climbed into the box and settled in to wait.

He wasn’t waiting long.

“Mew?” Cat!

Prowl reached over the edge of the box with his pedipalpi and helped Cat into the box with him. 

“Mew!” Cat said insistently, pawing gently at Prowl and pushing him

“I can’t go,” Prowl beeped. He was so tired, and he hurt from the day’s punishments. He hurt too much to get out through the hole under the cupboard.

That didn’t stop Cat’s insistent prodding. If it didn’t stop that soon, Smokescreen and Bluestreak would tattle on him.

Acquiescing, Prowl tumbled out of his box and shifted his wing-cases. “Now what?”

Cat jumped out of the box to land next to Prowl and lowered its belly armor to the ground. “Mew.”

Cautiously he approached Cat and touched it with his feeler palpi. It only flicked its audials back and forth and waited, so Prowl crawled up on its back and found places where he could hold onto it with his tarsomeres. When his grip was good, Cat stood up. It was like being on top of the dream-fey’s helm. Not nearly so high, but just as good. Especially when Cat went and eased the door open and trotted down the hall.

It was a strange thing, a strange way to experience Master Swindle’s shop, to be carried through familiar halls.

It would have been quite the adventure to simply be carried around for a while then returned to the box to sleep. But Cat had a different idea. 

It went down into the shop itself, where Master Swindle was entertaining some guests in a side room. Cat’s audial flaps perked up to listen.

“—uite a substantial reward for any and all freshly killed guinea pigatrons.”

“—dn’t heard that, no.”

“Apparently Prime is holding some sort of feast, and he wants to serve the guests a dish made from their energon, but his hunters haven’t been able to find any.”

“Interesting! Too bad neither of us are hunters; we would be rich!”

Cat’s audials twitched again.

Prowl worried about being caught, but Cat moved on before the two adults could say more. It took him to another room, the one where customers came in to talk to Master Swindle or Barricade showed off what was for sale. It was supposed to be locked up tight, but Cat pushed a window open and let them out into the night.

Prowl chittered excitedly. He’d never even considered Cat and he could explore together like this. 

Unlike Prowl, Cat didn’t stay on the streets. Even with Prowl on its back, it moved unhindered over and around buildings so that they always remained safely out of sight of the adults walking or driving the streets. Prowl thought that they would go into the alleys to look for fuel and treats and treasures in the trash, but Cat moved with purpose. It had a destination in mind.

Realizing that, Prowl debated using his awkward wings to tumble off and away. Mechs with destinations did not mean anything good to even so young a hatchling. Destinations meant being picked up and caged and sold and taken to bad places. But Cat wasn’t a mech, was it? Still, Prowl chattered nervously, clacking his mandibles together. 

Cat slowed, leaped to the ground and lowered itself to allow Prowl to get off. Prowl hesitated.

“Mew?” it asked.

“Where are we going?” Prowl beeped.

“Mew!” Almost there. Prowl decided to stay on Cat.

When Cat next lowered itself to the ground so Prowl could scutter off, they were in a new alley between two fenced-in gardens of manicured crystals instead of the walls of buildings. It was cleaner and smelled different than the alleys Prowl was used to. There was still a bin of trash, though rubbish wasn’t piled in the corners and Prowl guessed that meant someone came by to clean it up occasionally. 

Eagerly Prowl climbed one of the smaller bins, which tilted and fell under his weight, spilling its contents over the ground. That was better. It was easier to dig and search through, and he didn’t risk getting trapped in a bin!

Cat watched him for a moment, then leaped over one of the fences and disappeared into the garden.

This had to be Prowl’s favorite trash! In no time at all he found so many neat things he wasn’t sure he and Cat would be able to carry them all back to Master Swindle’s.

He taste-felt his way through the pile, pulling out interesting things. He found a blue bauble (that wasn’t even broken), a round bottle made from smoky green glass (also unbroken!) filled with some sort of gold translucent slime, and a multitool with only one blade slightly bent. And flimsies! All sorts of crumpled flimsies! More flimsies than Prowl could ever hope to take back and stuff into his bed-box. Prowl was definitely a happy hatchling!

And the treats!

The bin was full of fuel. He found a box of round, sweet hard-fuels and immediately put one in his mandibles to chew on while he searched. He found more hard-fuels, cube-shaped and blue with such a strong energon flavor he nearly fell over just from testing them with his feeler palpi. And he found three part-full canisters of regular liquid energon, laced with unfamiliar minerals. It was enough that he could share with Cat when it came back! Carefully he poured the fuel all into one canister.

A loud crash and a cat’s yowl made Prowl skitter into the container to hide before he recognized Cat whipping around the corner of the garden as though chased. A large something came after it, crashing and breaking against the ground of the alley.

Cat skidded to a stop in front of Prowl’s hiding place and crouched and flicked its audials impatiently. “Meow!” it demanded and since he could hear the heavy footsteps of a large adult chasing it, Prowl grabbed the canister he had been filling with liquid with his pedipalpi and clambered on top of Cat. 

It barely waited for Prowl’s tarsomeres to find their proper holds before taking off down the street. The treasure Cat had found whipped past Prowl, buffeting him so he couldn’t see. Fuel spilled from the canister and desperately, Prowl plugged the top with one of his feeler palpi so they wouldn’t lose any more of the precious liquid. He was hungry, and Cat needed to eat too!

He had no idea where they were when they stopped, but the air taste-touched like familiar rust and dirt and spoiled fuel to his free feeler palp, so it couldn’t be too far from Master Swindle’s. Cat lowered itself so Prowl could climb down.

Immediately Prowl pulled his feeler palp out of the canister and offered it to Cat. “We have to share,” he beeped. “But you get more since Master Swindle doesn’t feed you.”

Cat tilted its head, optics blinking. 

It dropped its treasure — some sort of mesh or flimsy — to the ground to lick at the opening and Prowl carefully tipped the canister so the fuel dripped out slowly, so Cat could lick it all up without spilling even a single drop. Prowl cooed, admiring Cat’s rough, hooked tongue. Someday he would have a tongue too! And when he did, he wanted it to be rough and flexible just like Cat’s.

When Cat was finished, Prowl eagerly drank his own share. It was much less soured than the fuel he usually found!

Prowl debated keeping the canister. It was hard, thinking about ending the night without even a little treasure. There had been SO MANY crumpled flimsies! And now all he had was a can. He couldn’t blame Cat — adults were mean — but Prowl wasn’t sure he wanted to throw out the can, even if he normally wouldn’t keep it. 

“Mew,” said Cat, plodding over to its own treasure and picking it up. With a flick, the soft mesh blanket settled around Prowl. It completely covered him! And it was only a little dirty!

It was so soft!

Prowl forgot all about the can. He had a blanket! A real blanket!

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“Well that’s an improvement, I guess,” the dream-fey said when he appeared in the dream room and looked at Prowl’s new dream-nest. 

Prowl cooed from his place in the dream-fey’s arms. It was a good nest! Not only did it have oily chamois and blanket scraps, but it also had piles and piles of crumpled flimsies. Piles! SO many flimsies; they spilled out of the box and over the berth to collect on the floor. And over the top of it was the new blanket Cat had given him, big enough to cover the dream-fey too. Soft and warm and safe!

“Can’t be too disappointed,” dream-fey said; he didn’t sound like he was talking to Prowl, exactly. More like around him. Prowl didn’t care. “The first attempt never works. No one knows what they want the first time I ask. So what is it, sneaky bug? Now that you have the best berth you can literally dream up, is there anything you think this room needs?”

That was directed at Prowl. 

Prowl beeped out a short melody.

The fey laughed. “You want me to sing to you?” Prowl beeped his affirmative. “Sure I’ll do that. Anything else?”

Prowl gave the question serious thought. He’d been forced to leave a lot of things behind when he and Cat had run. Maybe he should imagine the odd bottle or the sparkly bauble, or…

The candy!

With a blink, two boxes of candies appeared on the floor next to them. The ones he’d found hadn’t been full, but he made them full so he would have enough to share. What did dream-fey eat?

The fey crouched down to examine the boxes and he let Prowl wiggle out of his arms. Prowl didn’t yank on the chain (which was still tasty and his favorite thing to chew on) or pull on the collar around dream-fey’s neck, but the mech followed him closer anyway. “Candy, huh? That should be simple enough.”

Prowl spat out the chain to grab one of the cube-shaped solid fuels in his pedipalpi and mandibles. They were softer than the sphere-shaped really-hard candies, but they tasted just like they had when he’d touched them with his feeler palpi, strong enough to knock him over. Good!

Curiously the white fey picked up a cube to try it himself. “Eaten worse, but those are WAY better fresh, little bit.”

Better? How could they possibly be better? Prowl beeped in question.

“Well then,” the fey laughed. “I’ll just have to show you.” 

Prowl beeped the melody again. 

“Insistent little bug, aren’t you?” the fey smiled; he had sharp teeth like Cat’s and Prowl knew that when he got teeth, he was going to have sharp teeth too. They looked so much better than the flat teeth he saw on the other, mean, adults. “Alright… I’ll sing for my supper. Any requests?” Prowl stayed silent; he only knew the one melody and it was way too simple for the dream-fey. “Artist’s choice it is then.”

Prowl pulled the boxes over where they could both reach them and climbed into the dream-fey’s lap to listen.

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tbc


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra warning for child abuse in this chapter.
> 
> See if you can guess the blink-and-you'll-miss it mystery pairing. XD

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Prowl hid the blanket under the dirty chamois so Smokescreen wouldn’t see it.

Cat took him out the same way, through the supposed-to-be-locked window, the next night.

This time when Prowl found that the dumpster Cat left him at had all sorts of interesting flimsy scraps — which were tasty! He had to keep reminding himself not to swallow them, and that they were going to be so much better not-chewed-on — he stuffed them into a plastic container he found. He cleaned out the tarnished paste with his pedipalp — very tasty! — then stuffed the sweet-tasting flimsies into it. He packed as many down as he could fit. And when he found a bit of ribbon, like what Master Swindle used to tie packages closed when he was being extra nice to customers, he stuffed that into the can with the flimsies too.

He kept his feelers alert for fuel and found some scraps. Crumbs, bits, and more leftover paste. 

He did find a can still almost half-filled with the — yummy! — tarnish paste, and kept a hold of that too, like he was the canister he was stuffing the flimsies into.

This time when Cat came running out, insisting they leave immediately, he had his things ready. He wasn’t leaving behind such a trove of flimsies again!

No one chased them this time. Cat let him off on a rooftop to show him what it had found: a box of candies!

The box had all sorts of candies in it. Round pink-blue candies, and glittering yellow star candies, and puffy copper candies, and more glittering yellow and grey rolled candies full of paste… even some of the blue cube candies! Prowl remembered what dream-fey had said about the blue cubes tasting better when fresh. He wasn’t sure where Cat had found the box, but it wasn’t in the trash so maybe these were fresher. The touch-taste almost knocked him off the roof again, but Cat braced him so he didn’t fall so that was okay.

He picked up the blue cube candy and held it securely while he nibbled on it with his mandibles. It was SOOO good! dream-fey was right! While he nibbled, he divided up the candy for him and Cat equally.

“Mew,” Cat said, in protest, nudging one of the candies back towards Prowl.

“You need the fuel more than me,” Prowl beeped. “And you went to get it. So it’s yours, and we will share.” To him, it made perfect sense. He put the candy back in Cat’s pile.

Cat pushed the candy back towards Prowl.

Prowl huffed. He pushed it back to Cat.

Cat pushed it back to Prowl.

Ooh! Maybe it was a game! Prowl liked games. But they shouldn’t play games with the candies. They might get lost, and neither of them could afford to lose the fuel. But Prowl had a ribbon!

Carefully he put all the candies in the box. They would have to find a place to hide them where Master Swindle and the others wouldn’t see it, but it was good fuel. That done, he pulled the ribbon out of the canister with the flimsies and waved it in front of Cat.

Cat sniffed in disdain, but its optic band watched the end of the ribbon very closely. With a happy chitter, Prowl tickled Cat’s paw…

Pounce!

With a happy squeal, Prowl pulled the ribbon out of Cat’s grip as it tried to bite down on it. He skittered away, dragging the string behind him, watching Cat run after him, jumping and pouncing.

He wasn’t sure how he transitioned from dragging and waving the ribbon for Cat to catch, to being the one trying to snatch the bit of wiggling sparkle from the clawed hands of the dream-fey, but this was just as fun.

“Yer a very vexing little bug,” the dream-fey said as he wiggled the ribbon across the floor. With an excited chitter, Prowl pounced on it, just like Cat had done. At the last second, the ribbon snapped up, into the air, and Prowl pursued it on his clumsy wings. “This was supposed to be simpler. Hatchlings are supposed to have simple desires: soft blankets, candy…” Prowl caught the ribbon in his pedipalpi and mandible, tumbling and tangling with the ribbon as it jerked again. “... toys. Is that it?” Prowl squealed as he tried to open his wings and keep himself from crashing, but he was tangled up in the ribbon. 

Instead of crashing into a wall or the floor as Prowl had so many times before when his wings weren’t enough to keep him from falling, the dream-fey caught him, and started gently untangling the hatchling from the ribbon.

“Would you like a toy, Prowl? A real toy?” He held Prowl to his chest, and stroked his wing-casings, and let Prowl touch him with his feeler palpi. “What is it you want, little bit?”

Prowl beeped the simple melody so that the fey would sing.

Dream-fey laughed and put Prowl up onto his shoulder. He brushed the new layer of flimsies (these were the ones he’d found behind the building with the tasty dumpster) off of the berth so he could sit next to the (now almost completely buried) box and picked up one of the new pieces. He held it up to Prowl, who took it and chewed on it because it was tasty!

Dream-fey laughed again. “Vexing little thing. Yer the first person I’ve met who liked the candy wrappers more than the candy.”

Prowl just chewed on the flimsy. Candy was tasty too, and both he and Cat needed the fuel, but flimsies were good for all sorts of things! 

“Why are you so hard to figure out?” The dream-fey sighed. “I thought you would be easier than the others.”

Prowl beeped the melody again, muffled by the flimsy in his mandibles. Just chew. No swallowing.

“I’ll try toys. I do know a song about toys.” Then he sang an upbeat thing. He stood and twirled and stepped along with the melody, the ribbon whipping by in time with the aria. Unable to help himself, Prowl launched himself after the end of the ribbon.

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Smokescreen sniffed when he saw the nest Prowl’s recharge box was becoming, piled high with soiled flimsies with the occasional greasy chamois peeking out. Prowl liked the flimsies. They were squishy and touch-tasted so yummy he had to remind himself not to eat them. And even Prowl knew not to leave the blanket, or the candies, where anyone else could see them.

Prowl stuffed three of the candies into his mandibles and swallowed them before digging his way out of the pile. Cat poked its head out a nanoklick later, one crumpled flimsy perched on its head.

“Go,” he beeped, and Cat leaped out of the box to scamper… wherever it hid during the day. 

Bluestreak was stirring and Prowl had to get downstairs to clean up before he would be given energon. Carefully he covered his treasures — the ones Cat had given him — with his other treasures, the things he’d found which the other two apprentices (mostly) wouldn’t bother to take, the chamois, the flimsies, bits of metal and gears and an old, rusted coil of metal. Then he scurried down to do the sweeping.

That night, Cat left him digging through a knocked over can with gears and springs and bits of wire. He found some dirty cloths and some flimsies, and he tucked those into a broken cube (he had to be careful not to touch the broken edge; it was sharp!) so when they ran, he could take them with them. He also liked the wire! And he found some bits like the magic chain in his dreams, only not as sweet to chew on; he kept those too.

Unlike the other times though, Cat didn’t leave him. 

It jumped up onto the fence separating the alley from the small yard behind a tall house and meowed loudly. Then it yowled.

Then it yowled again, a loud and nasty sound that, if Prowl couldn’t see Cat, right there at the top of the fence, would have made him worry for its safety.

“Oh, Primus, shut it up!”

Prowl scrambled into the can to hide from the irate adult. But Cat didn’t run away. It stayed on top of the fence where everyone could see it and yowled again.

“Cat!” Prowl beeped anxiously. “Stop that! You’re going to get us in trouble.”

Cat looked down at Prowl and flicked its ears back and forth in amusement, then it yowled again, this time ending with an audio-splitting shriek.

“That’s it!” the adult yelled, and something came flying out of the house. Cat leaped out of the way, and the thing fell into the alley with Prowl and broke. 

“Stop throwing things, Whirl!” another, much louder voice scolded, and the yelling stopped.

After a few moments of silence, Prowl crept out to investigate. It was a cube, now broken.

Cat looked down at Prowl and twitched its audials again. Aren’t I clever?

Prowl poked the broken cube. “Why would you want a cube?” he beeped.

Cat huffed. 

Then it yowled again. 

“Aargh!” Clatter! Crash! Prowl skittered out of the way of the weird-looking object. He poked it and it beeped. He looked up at Cat; Cat looked smug. 

Prowl didn’t know what it was. It looked a little like an adult, with two arms and two legs and a distinguishable head without antennae or feeler palpi. It still had wings though, or something like wings, triangular. When Prowl poked it again, the optics lit up and it trilled out a basic glyph sequence in hatchling binary.

Prowl poked it to hear it again, and it said something different. Weird.

He looked back up at Cat. Cat huffed.

Then it yowled again, making that painful, worrying scream. And it kept yowling and screaming, while the two adults inside the house argued and eventually the irritable one threw something else. That hit the fence and dropped down into the yard. Cat went and fetched it, dropping it down to Prowl.

It was another miniature adult, this one made from soft, cuddly black, brown and silver mesh. It looked very tall and spindly. Hard, metal optics were flat and didn’t light up, nor did this one make any noise.

Was this what Cat was trying to get? Why? Prowl beeped the question up to Cat, who huffed again.

Yowling again got one with a very large white head and a very small brown body that lit up but didn’t talk. Then one made from patchwork orange and green metal pieces.

Prowl didn’t understand the point, but if Cat wanted these things, Prowl would make sure they didn’t get left in the alley. He fished a squished box from the can and pushed it until the sides stood up straight again and loaded the weird things into it.

Above him, Cat’s yowling was interrupted by a yelp as one of the things hit it directly. Cat twisted in midair so it landed gently on the ground nearby. Prowl ignored the thing that bounced down next to him to scuttle over and check Cat for any sort of injury. 

Cat shook off his feeler palpi and just gave Prowl a smug look.

“You should be more careful,” Prowl beeped. Cat huffed and trotted over to the new thing, picked it up and dragged it over to Prowl and dropped it. It looked pleased with itself, twitching its audial flaps back and forth. 

Prowl dutifully examined this newest thing. He was already inclined to dislike it because it had hit Cat, but if Cat wanted him to look at it…

It was one of the soft things, he was relieved to see. This one was shaped like a hatchling, though in a vivid blue that reminded him of the stripe on dream-fey’s chest plating. Prowl had never seen another hatchling before, even a miniature one like this. Fascinated, Prowl manipulated the thing’s pedipalpi with his own.

“Mew?” Cat asked.

It was interesting, but — “I don’t like it,” Prowl beeped — it had hit Cat.

Cat snorted and jumped back onto the fence, back feet scrabbling until it was secure. Then it yowled again.

“Why are you doing that?” Prowl asked. “Getting hit is no fun!”

Cat only yowled-screamed again.

“Cat!”

“That’s it!” the irate adult yelled from inside. Hurriedly, Prowl stuffed the soft pretend-hatchling into the box with the others. Something else, something that hit the wall of the alley hard enough to chip the far building came flying out. Cat dodged it; Prowl and scuttled into the trash can to get away from the thing as it bounced onto the ground.

“If you must throw things at strays,” the second adult, sounding much angrier than he had earlier, “kindly stick to throwing your own things.”

“Whatever,” said the first. “If you’re going to go get it, could you chase that damn cat off while you do.”

The only answer was for the door of the house to slam open.

Cat jumped down and snatched the key while Prowl grabbed the box of miniature people and the broken cube of gears and springs and things, then climbed up on Cat when it offered its back. 

They escaped down the alley.

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“There is something wrong with this picture,” dream-fey sounded exasperated, but not angry so Prowl didn’t worry about it. He just chewed on the magic chain while he stacked the pile of gears and springs and bits of wire into a tower. It was going to be the biggest tower he’d ever built! 

“I mean, look at this.” Curious what dream-fey was trying to get him to look at, Prowl looked around the room. Far from being the boring, plain, room it had been when dream-fey had first appeared, it was now full of interesting things! The berth was full of blankets and flimsies, he and dream-fey were splitting the box of candies (which had refilled when Prowl had fallen back asleep), and there were all the interesting bits and pieces he was playing with now. Especially the wires! Prowl liked wires! The weird tiny-people Cat had brought back were even stacked in one corner. He still wasn’t sure what to do with them, but… 

“Yeah, those,” dream-fey said when Prowl looked at the tiny-people. “Whirl’s the best dollmaker in the city and you have four examples of, okay maybe not his best work, but still! Four! Actual toys! And you’re over here,” he pointed one of his claws down where Prowl was building his tower, “playing with things you found in the trash.”

Prowl liked things he found in the trash.

After a breem of Prowl just staring at dream-fey, the mech threw himself back on the pile of flimsies on the berth. “I give up! Obviously, I was given an impossible task by a sadistic she-devil and this is my life now. This isn’t a lesson; this is eternal punishment, plain and simple.”

He sounded sad, so Prowl climbed up his leg, trying to get to his chest or shoulder where he could offer some sort of… Prowl didn’t know what he could offer. Bluestreak liked to curl around his blanket when he cried, but dream-fey didn’t seem interested in the blanket that was already there; maybe Prowl could dream up something else for dream-fey to curl around.

Dream-fey twitched violently when Prowl got to the top of his leg, where it joined up with his body. Instead of letting him climb further, dream-fey scooped him up in his arms and deposited him next to his shoulder, on a pile of flimsies. Then he shifted so he was curled around Prowl. Prowl blinked. Okay. 

“At least that’s not something I have to worry about with you, huh, little bit? You’re way too young to want that.” Dream-fey stroked gently over Prowl’s head and down his wing cases; Prowl copied the gesture with his feeler palpi, brushing the feathery ends over the dulled points of his audial horns and down to the rubber/other texture-taste of his tire. “I chose you because I thought a hatchling would be easy, but since obviously, it’s NOT, I suppose a break is in order. Innocent dreams. I could get used to innocence.”

Prowl snuggled into dream-fey’s chest and shoulder and let him clutch him. If he wanted to hold Prowl and talk, then that was fine. He made a trilling sound.

“Which, innocence… kind of the last thing I thought I’d ever want a thousand vorn ago,” dream-fey mused. “I was definitely not innocent then. But there’s a difference, you know, between choosing not to be innocent, and being pulled down by this Primusdamned chain and,” he hesitated, stroked Prowl’s wing casings. “Nevermind. The worst thing — the worst thing — is that every time it happened I thought that, maybe, that’s what they wanted, what they really wanted, and submitted because I thought it would free me.”

Prowl hadn’t really thought about the chain. Since dream-fey had demonstrated that he couldn’t pull on Prowl with it, Prowl hadn’t had any reason to think about it. It was tasty, and always in grabbing distance, so he tended to just grab it to chew on without thinking. He was chewing on it now, in fact. But he had no reason to yank it.

But dream-fey was saying that others had yanked on it. That made the chain bad.

“What is it?” the dream-fey asked as Prowl growled and made a particular effort to break it. Prowl didn’t answer. “No, little bit, you can’t eat that.” Prowl just growled again; dream-fey laughed. “Are you trying to break it? Oh, sweetling, you can’t. I can’t. I told you: it’s a magic chain. It can’t be broken.”

Prowl spit it out like it tasted bad and beeped a question. 

“By giving you what you want, what you truly want,” dream-fey answered. “And I’ve been trying, but you,” one clawed finger tapped Prowl between his optics, “are very difficult.”

Prowl tilted his head and thought. He thought really hard about what he wanted that he didn’t already have. 

There was only one thing, and he beeped out his melody in request. 

The dream-fey laughed, high and loud and with an edge of tears to it. “I finally have a master who actually tries to free me, and he doesn’t know what he wants any more than I do.” He clutched Prowl closer; that was good, if dream-fey was going to cry, Prowl wanted to be close enough to be clutched for him. But dream-fey didn’t cry. “It was the not-knowing that got me into this mess. I didn’t know the difference between dreams and reality, so I created a song that would give a mech what they wanted, what they truly wanted — but only in their dreams. I thought it was enough, but the Queen did not agree.”

Prowl beeped. “Why?”

“Because her court, for whom I’d performed my song, went...” he hesitated, “they started acting erratically, acting out their dreams. I thought it funny,” dream-fey didn’t sound like he thought it was funny now; Prowl wasn’t sure he understood anything dream-fey was telling him, but he listened. “I was so proud. I’m not a powerful fey, but I’d affected the Queen’s whole court with my song. It’s not every fey who can make the Consort of the Realm act like a zap pony! Quite the accomplishment. I was the best violino player in all the fey realms! But the Queen was not amused.”

Prowl didn’t know anything about what dream-fey was talking about. He was talking about ponies and consorts (Prowl didn’t know what that was), and Queens (Prime was the ruler of the Iacon, and Master Swindle the ruler of everything more immediate to Prowl) and a lot of other things he wasn’t sure he should ask questions about. 

Finally, “What’s a vi… a vi-li-o?”

Dream-fey laughed again, this time without any sound of tears. “It’s a stringed musical instrument…” he trailed off when Prowl’s antennae just waved around without comprehension. “You know what? You want me to sing to you? I am a much better violino player than I am a vocalist… So let’s see if we can dream up a proper instrument for me to play for you. You think we can do that?”

Prowl beeped. Yes. He’d do anything if it made dream-fey happy instead of clutching and sad.

Dream-fey sat up, leaving Prowl in the bed of scraps and started rooting through the flimsies, uncrumpling them to look at what was on them.

“Too bad you can’t read, little bit,” he chuckled. “Or else we might have some good blackmail material in this pile, instead of just some greyed areas and squiggles. Here’s one that’s blank and doesn’t have too many frosting stains on it. You think you can dream up something to draw with?”

Prowl’s antennae only waved around, touch-tasting the air. 

“We’ll see about getting you some crayons later, but for now… a bit of charcoal, maybe,” the dream-fey suggested. He held out his hand; a chunk of burned fuel from Master Swindle’s fireplace appeared in it.

Dream-fey drew a shape on the flimsy, then held it out to show Prowl. The line was jagged and uneven and broke where the burned bit was too hard to transfer to the flimsy. It was an interesting shape: a rounded hourglass with something sticking out one end. 

“We’ll start simple,” dream-fey said. “Since I don’t think you could dream up a block of electrum, how about brass? See if you can dream up a block of brass shaped like this.”

Brass like Master Swindle’s countertops? Prowl could do that.

.

.

.

The brass on Master Swindle’s countertops was the wrong kind of brass, but Prowl didn’t know how to adjust the amount of copper or zinc or other metals in the block. Dream-fey ended up picking through the collection of gears and wires and asking Prowl to taste-touch them, then adjust the metal of the block they’d conjured accordingly. Then he’d tap the block to check to see if the metal was right.

By comparison, hollowing it out had been easy. Dream-fey tapped it to make a sound and Prowl slowly hollowed out the block until the metal was the thickness of a few sheets of flimsy and dream-fey said it sounded right. By that point, it was almost time to wake up, and dream-fey said he’d have to figure out a way to show Prowl the “fiddly bits” so he could copy them.

Prowl had just asked dream-fey to sing until it was time to wake when he was woken.

The box — the box in the real world — toppled over, spilling out its contents. Flimsies and scraps and bits and Cat’s treasures and Prowl and Cat all ended up sprawled on the floor. With a yowl, Cat ran between Barricade’s legs. Barricade cursed, but Cat was gone.

Prowl was glad because he was staring up at the massive form of a very angry Master Swindle.

“What’s all this?” Master Swindle hissed angrily. Prowl started to beep out the list of things he and Cat had collected in answer, but Master Swindle silenced him with a kick. “You know what? I don’t care. What I care about is that you have been very bad… and that’s in addition to a waste of space and resources. This? This is garbage! You’ve been sneaking out to collect garbage!”

It wasn’t garbage. It was his treasures, but Prowl didn’t have the breath to protest. Behind Master Swindle, Barricade just snickered. 

“Clean this scrap up,” Swindle ordered. “Then bring it downstairs so I can punish you.”

Resisting or protesting in any way would just make Master Swindle angrier, so Prowl started piling the scraps and tasty treats back into the box. He was hungry and tried to eat the treats Cat had gotten for them since Master Swindle was just going to throw them away, but Barricade stayed to supervise and took the treats before Prowl could have even one bite. 

The box was too big to carry in his pedipalps, so Prowl resorted to pushing the box out of the room and towards the stairs. The stairs themselves stymied him for a bit, but Barricade’s gleefully looming presence was more than enough reason not to give up. He pushed the box until it was hanging partway off the first step, scuttled around below it, then carefully guided it down. His wings buzzed nervously as the box threatened to tip, spilling its contents, but it didn’t, and Prowl set out to repeat the procedure for the second step.

His whole frame ached, and the place where Master Swindle had kicked him felt like it was on fire, by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs. 

“Stay there,” Master Swindle ordered when Prowl had pushed the box of treasures over to him. He took the box; unlike the hatchling, the adult mech lifted it effortlessly and shoved it into Barricade’s arm. “Dispose of that. I’ll deal with this.” 

Prowl just cowered as Swindle picked up one of the brooms the older apprentices used.

The first strike was so fast, Prowl didn’t even see it coming. He squealed in pain, but it did nothing to deter the Master from delivering his punishment.

He wasn’t sure when he lost consciousness, but when he woke it was dark and quiet. The air tasted of stale dust and nighttime. Prowl tried to move but found he couldn’t. His frame just hurt too much. Two of his legs refused to move at all and Prowl hissed as he twisted to prod them with his pedipalps. The armor was squished and they hung almost limply from his body. It was soooo much worse than the dents.

In too much pain to move much, Prowl just let himself drift. It was cold and hard and dark in here, the walls close enough for him to reach out and touch-taste with his antennae if he tried. He was locked in a box or a cupboard or something. Less comfortable than the dumpster. He tried to sleep, but if he did his dreams were full of unending pain, with no dream-fey, or room of treasures, or the brass thing they were still trying to make at all. 

Just silence, darkness and pain. He cried.

Sometimes he would feel the vibrations of a mech passing nearby, but he didn’t know if it was Master Swindle or one of the other apprentices. They didn’t stop to look in on him or check on his crying, so Prowl tried to pay them no attention either.

If he could have, he would have moved, tried to explore his confinement, maybe figure out a way out! But the one time he tried to stand, his squished legs collapsed before they’d even taken his weight.

“—ppy to hand the little troublemaker over to face justice,” Master Swindle’s slimy voice cut into the haze of dark and pain. “I just need to know I’ll be compensated for the lost work.”

“Yes. Of course.” The voice was familiar and Prowl strained to remember. It was the other adult, the not-Whirl, who had thrown things at Cat when it yowled on the fence. Prowl and Cat had taken the things and ran, and this adult must be here to hit Prowl some more for taking the things. “As long as you understand that I want you to remain silent about this,” the adult added.

“Yes, yes. I understand. I won’t say anything about you taking the little thief… for a fee.”

Prowl heard a clinking sound.

“Excellent! I’ve put him in here.”

The door opened and light flooded into the cupboard. Prowl squealed and tried to scuttle back, but his legs wouldn’t move. Instead, he ended up just cowering where he was, squeaking and shivering as the… the absolutely HUGE orange and blue adult looked down at him.

“He’s all yours,” Swindle said.

“Go away,” the new adult said, and Master Swindle scurried away. The adult reached into the cupboard — Prowl tried again to scramble away but even if he could move there was no place for him to go — and picked up Prowl in one massive hand. “We’re leaving. You’re coming with me.” The voice, the words, were hard and stern, but the mech’s grip was much gentler than Prowl had expected it to be.

“No,” Prowl beeped. “Don’t want…”

“Your master just sold you to me so I could take you to face justice. You’re mine now…” The mech tilted his head, a familiar quizzical gesture that looked all wrong on this massive adult. “Huh. I didn’t consider that when I came here, but you are. You belong to me now. That’s… odd.”

Prowl didn’t protest this time. He had belonged to Master Swindle, and now he belonged to this adult. 

“Come on. It’s time to leave.” 

Cradled in a hand large enough to squish him outright, and too injured to move already, Prowl didn’t bother protesting. He didn’t know what “justice” was, but if this adult, the not-Whirl, was mad at him for Cat’s theft, then Prowl knew it could be nothing good.

But it wasn’t like he had a choice.

Prowl had never seen the outside of Master Swindle’s shop during the daytime. It was bright, so bright it hurt his optics and Prowl ended up trying to hide under the shade of the stranger’s fingers, despite wanting to get away from him. It taste-smelled worse somehow too, like the light did something to the trash and piles of discarded things that made it go from intriguing and full of possible springs and strings and other treasures to garbage. All around them mechs moved, walked and drove. It was so much movement to try and track with his antennae that Prowl got dizzy, and he ended up curled into a ball, as tightly around his injuries as he could, shivering at each roar of a too-close engine.

The stranger himself didn't make any noise except for the heavy thud thud of his footsteps and the surprisingly soft rumble of his engine. He didn't yell at Prowl for being scared of the traffic or for whimpering or any of the rest. 

Prowl wondered what "justice" meant and what sort of bad things would happen to him.

He felt them pass underneath something huge and thought it might be a doorway, so he looked up. It was the biggest doorway he'd ever seen! An arch made of stone, large enough to let all the mechs, walking or driving, through at once. Wow! Despite himself, Prowl let his antennae free to wave around and taste-feel-hear the air. 

The echoes of the other mechs in the doorway were confusing, but the strange taste of the stone wafting through the air, the cool heaviness of the place made up for it.

"That's better," the huge mech rumbled and with a squeak, Prowl curled back up into his pained ball. 

The stranger did not speak again as they exited the doorway into a... a space. All the space. The sudden lack of... echoes or stone-scent or... anything pulled Prowl back out of his huddle to check.

Nothing greeted him. A big flat plain of... nothing. No buildings, no walls, no doors or boxed or alleys or cupboards... There were still other mechs walking or driving alongside them, but without the echoes, the closed-in, oppressiveness of the streets and buildings, they were all very quiet. How could so much nothing exist?

"It's the kill zone outside the city walls," the big stranger answered. "We're leaving the city."

Prowl couldn't help it. "Why?" he chirped.

"We're both thieves, little bit. I thought you'd like getting away from that nasty owner of yours."

Prowl thought about that. Being away from Master Swindle was good, but he still didn't know what the stranger wanted from him. He swept his antennae over the parts of the stranger he could reach, touch-tasting what he could of the mech. He tasted like clean things. Clean sharp things. Maybe that's what he wanted, for Prowl to clean things. Prowl could clean things. 

"Still not going to ask my name?" The stranger sounded amused more than anything.

"No," Prowl beeped back. Names were just sounds. The taste-touch of the mech's smooth armor was enough. Clean and sharp and, if he concentrated really, really hard, Prowl could even taste-touch a whiff of something... something familiar. Familiar like the dirty alleys and the cyberfleas...

"Well I can't go completely nameless for you anymore," the big mech rumbled. "So I guess you can call me Ultra Magnus... and yes, before you ask. It's a lie."

Prowl just shrugged with his wing casings; one of them got stuck and didn't move the whole way. He didn't care about the stranger's name. Ultra Magnus... tilting his head, he looked up at the stranger's face. It fit, he supposed. It was a very big, grand name, for a very big, grand mech. But it didn't fit the mech's optics, the familiar tilt of his head, the subtle scent of trash and flea-bitten plating... he wasn't sure how, or why, but... "Cat."

Ultra Magnus stopped and looked down at the hatchling in his hand. 

Eventually, he shook his head and kept walking. "Clever little bit. You can call me that too."

Cat! It was Cat! He'd been so afraid Cat was gone forever and ever but it wasn't and instead it had come back, pretending to be a mech to take him on another adventure! "Cat!" he chirped. "Cat. Cat. Cat."

"I know you can say more than that, little bit."

It didn't matter. He had Cat back, and everything was going to be okay.

.

.

.

Exhausted and still in pain, he couldn't stay excited for very long. Eventually, Prowl fell into recharge in Cat/Ultra Magnus' hand. He dreamed that the dream-fey had come back and was crooning out comforting words — "It's going to be okay. I'll get you fixed up. Then we'll go anywhere you want. Anywhere in the world..." — but when he tried to beep out one of dream-fey's melodies to ask him to sing, the fey didn't respond and try as he could, he couldn't find the room with the dream-conjured treasures where he and dream-fey had always been before...

He woke to quiet and darkness. Soooo much quiet.

The air tasted strange. Cold and still and nothing like the city. It tasted like the same otherness the dream-fey tasted like and Prowl turned on his optics to see where he was. Ultra Magnus stood guard, tall and quiet, but didn’t move. The optics were dark. Cat wasn’t there. Prowl didn’t see Cat anywhere. Tall, pointed spires loomed out of the dark, closing them in, but also protective. Prowl could see gaps into even deeper darkness at the bases of the spires, places he could run, hide escape. And above the spires…

Prowl toppled over, his wings buzzing fruitlessly to try and right himself before he hit the ground. Above the spires was the most beautiful glittery, shiny… something Prowl could possibly imagine.

It was only after he righted himself, landing on his two injured legs, that he realized he didn’t hurt as much as he should. Master Swindle had crushed two and he hadn’t even been able to move before. Hatchlings were not made for flexibility — they were made for scuttling, and exploring! — but Prowl twisted around as best he could to see. The two legs on his hurt side, the broken ones, were covered in cloth and bundled in metal rods to keep them straight. He tried to move his hind leg and found it hurt, held stiff by the metal rods, but the crushing, crippling pain that had refused to support him earlier was gone. Was this what being repaired was supposed to feel like?

Exhausted from his exertions, Prowl flopped himself deliberately over so he could look at the glittery things above him. He didn’t bother with the quiet Ultra Magnus because Cat wasn’t there.

Until it was.

Prowl didn’t hear Cat return, but he tasted the creature with his antennae. Flicking open one wing casing, he flipped himself over to see it.

Cat dropped the thing it had found in front of Prowl and wiggled its tail-less aft proudly. Prowl scuttled — slower than usual; it was a good thing they wouldn’t be running from angry adults soon — over to it to examine it. It was another mechanimal. A tailless, fluffy turborat. “What’s this?” he beeped.

Cat flipped the thing over and ripped out part of its belly, tearing away the softer plating to let energon well out of the wound. It bent down to lap at it, then took a step back to look expectantly at Prowl.

Prowl needed no more instruction. Copying Cat as best he could (he didn’t have a tongue), he dipped one of his pedipalps into the mechanimal’s energon and brought it to his mouth to suck it away. He wasn’t sure what to expect from a dead creature’s fuel, but it tasted better than the sour energon he found in the trash, even better than the not-sour energon Master Swindle gave him, though not as good or as sweet as the treats Cat had found for him. Deciding it was good — he was hungry — he dipped his other pedipalp into the wound to gather up fuel. 

With a sniff of satisfaction, Cat turned away to patrol the edge of the spires.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Prowl asked. He had shared the fuel and treats they’d found and he wasn’t sure he should eat all of this creature’s energon without letting Cat have some. 

Cat gave him a disdainful look and pounced on something. When it looked up again, it was holding an even tinier creature in its jaws, which it quickly devoured right there. Oh. Prowl turned back to the larger, tailless turborat, which was apparently all his.

Prowl drank the creature's energon until his tank ached, then he laid down. It was cold and nothing like laying in his box full of scraps, but he was full and tired and his legs still hurt. He was certain he would not be able to walk anywhere. Besides, he'd heard the dream-fey before and he wanted to see if he could find the dream-room. He couldn't wait to tell dream-fey he was free from Master Swindle!

Cat came back from its patrol around the base of the tall spires and laid down with Prowl. Prowl stroked it with the feathery ends of his feeler palpi, touch-tasting the familiar plating. Cat licked him back in reassurance and perked up its ears imperiously. Sleep.

Prowl did.

He turned on his optics in the dream room, tucked in the large box of scraps he'd created for him and dream-fey to sleep in on the berth. He wiggled. 

"Good t'see y'too, little bit," dream-fey murmured from behind him. Prowl spun in the larger mech's arms and tackled the warm chest plating, clicking excitedly. He was so happy dream-fey had come with him!

The dream-fey petted over Prowl's feeler palpi, antennae, and wing casings affectionately. "So now you're free from that nasty owner. We can go anywhere on Cybertron you want...?"

Prowl just blinked. Did that mean they wouldn't be in the room anymore? He scrambled up on top of dream-fey, shedding blanket scraps and flimsies as he did so, sending a couple bouncing out of the box and onto the ground. No, the room was still here and so were all the treasures he'd dreamed up with dream-fey's help. Not only the box full of soft and squishy things, but the treats, and the gears and wires and springs, and the soft false hatchlings piled up in one corner... There were shadows on the walls, and Prowl stared, fascinated, at them. They looked almost like... and as things tended to when he thought of them properly, the shadows sharpened and coalesced into the tall sharp pillars that he knew surrounded him in the waking world right now. Prowl looked up, and the thought conjured the darkness and lights.

Dream-fey laughed. "Crystals and stars. Pretty, but not very imaginative." He lifted Prowl up — and Prowl didn't even try to wiggle free — and climbed out of the box himself. The graceful landing on the floor went crunch as it never had before, and Prowl realized that the floor was no longer the smooth planks of Master Swindle's shop, but were now the crumbled and broken pieces of sparkle-spires — crystals — like the clearing where he and Cat were sleeping. "Crayons. I never did get you some crayons."

Since Prowl didn't know what a crayon was, he didn't worry about it. It did remind him of the brass thing, the violino, he and dream-fey had been making. He buzzed his wings to escape from the dream-fey's grip — he was released immediately — and tumbled through the air haphazardly until he landed clumsily on the pile of bits and scraps, sending them skittering through the broken crystal. But he saw the one he wanted: the weird hollow brass shape dream-fey had said was the basis of the violino. Triumphantly he held the thing awkwardly in his pedipalps out to dream-fey, who chuckled. 

"We can try, little bit, but it's going to be hard to dream up the other pieces if I can't show you what they are." 

Immediately Prowl conjured a pile of charcoal bits for the dream-fey to use to draw them out on the greasy flimsies like he had the basic shape they'd started with.

Dream-fey sat down next to the berth and picked up one of the bits of charcoal. "This isn't really good for drawing. How about we start by dreaming up something better?"

Prowl beeped an affirmative.

"Alright." Dream-fey held out the charcoal and patted a spot on the ground nearby. "Come here then. First thing we're going to need is a bowl. One without too many cracks, little bit."

Prowl ignored the spot dream-fey had indicated and set the violino aside so he could climb up onto the mech's helm. He liked this spot! He held on to the fey's helm protrusions with his tarsal hooks and leaned forward so he could watch the mech as he worked.

"You can do that too, but I need that bowl."

A bowl, exactly like the one Master Swindle had given Prowl his energon in, appeared in front of dream-fey.

"Good. Next step is to turn some of these charcoal pieces to powder..."

Patiently, dream-fey walked him through the steps of powdering the charcoal, conjuring and melting wax, mixing it, then pouring the mixture into a long, thin pipe to cool. Once it was hard, dream-fey asked him to make the pipe disappear (Prowl made it reappear over in the pile of trash, since he didn't want to lose such a nice pipe!), leaving behind a long, thin cylinder of blackened wax. Dream-fey broke it into several pieces, then tested how it made marks on a flattened, greasy flimsy. 

"Good!" he exclaimed at the dark, even mark the crayon made. "Very good, little bit. This'll help."

Prowl realized that, while they'd worked, he'd put the magic chain in his mouth and started to chew on it. It was sweet! He couldn't help it! But he spat it out in disgust. He hated the chain.

"Why don't you test out our new crayons too?" dream-fey, suggested, ignoring the chain as he always did unless Prowl drew attention to it. "Draw a bit. Maybe we'll both get some idea of what you want." So they could break the chain! Yes! "Or at least some idea of other colors you'd like to make."

Prowl was already buzzing his wings and tumbling to the ground. He landed on his back but righted himself by flipping open one wing-casing.

Dream-fey held out a bit of the crayon with a sharp point where it had broken off the main piece. Prowl picked it up with his pedipalp and pounced on one of the flimsies that had bounced out of the box and to the floor earlier. Copying dream-fey, he flattened it, smoothing the wrinkles as best he could then used the crayon to draw a long, straight line. 

It wasn't right. The greasy spots on the flimsy didn't take the crayon's color very well and Prowl wished the spots gone before trying again. Perfect!

Happily, Prowl started drawing more. Lines and squiggles and coils like springs. He drew a pile of blocks, then tried to draw one of the floppy false-hatchlings in the corner. This time, whenever he conjured another pile of greasy flimsies to keep drawing on, he made sure to dream away the grease spots before trying to use the crayon. He even drew the dream-fey! He liked drawing the dream-fey!

"Nice," dream-fey said, and Prowl chirred happily. "We're going to have to wake up soon though."

Oh no! Prowl had been so absorbed in drawing he'd forgotten all about trying to conjure violino pieces. He dropped the crayon and scurried over to the larger mech's drawings.

They were mostly incomprehensible shapes that Prowl didn't understand, but they looked easy enough to conjure if dream-fey told him what they were supposed to be made of. He beeped the question.

"Later," dream-fey said. "You need to wake up. We need to get you someplace actually warm." He frowned worriedly. "You're starting to run a fever..."

Prowl felt fine! He beeped.

"You're always fine in the dream. But your body's getting sick. You were hurt, and now it's too cold..." He came over and picked Prowl up to cuddle him to the red and blue stripes on his chest. "I don't want to lose you this quickly. I want to give you what you want," so he could be free of the chain.

Prowl chirred and beeped the question.

"Well yeah, but I've given up on that, really," dream-fey petted his hand over Prowl's wing casings. "I don't know what you want. You don't know what you want... So I'll settle for watching you grow up. Preferably happy. Which means we need to take care of this fever before it gets worse. Of all the times to wish I still had magic..." Prowl was satisfied that the dream-fey wouldn't be going anywhere soon. He didn't like the chain — he spat it out again — and wanted dream-fey free of it, but he didn't want him gone. He reached up with his forelegs and hooked his tarsals onto the rubber-other taste of the dream-fey's tire and pulled himself up onto his shoulder, spreading his legs out over the hubcap to steady himself. He wasn't waking up!

Dream-fey laughed. "Stubborn little bug. Alright. We'll sleep a few more kliks. Show me what you drew..."

The dream faded slowly and Prowl didn't so much wake as groggily twitch as Ultra Magnus covered him with flakes of metal and crystal. He still shivered, though he didn't think he was cold. Blue optics blinked down at him, the face softening with concern. 

"You need a medic," Magnus said quietly. "I can't heal you..." Prowl saw massive hands clench and the mech turned away in frustration. 

Beeping cheerfully — he was here, he was with Cat, everything was going to be okay! — Prowl drifted back off. 

Time turned into a blur of darkness and light. Sometimes he heard the dream-fey's worried voice and sometimes Ultra Magnus'. Most of the time he felt/tasted familiar plating as Cat lent its weight and heat to him, licking him to ease him through the shivers.

He wasn't sure if it was a dream, or something else, when... he turned on his optics to see Ultra Magnus' gentle finger running down the carapace over his wings. He beeped weakly.

"I'm going to go get help. Just stay where you are... little prince."

Prince? Prowl was sure he hadn't heard right, but he was too tired and weak to protest.

For the first time since the cupboard, Prowl was alone. Now he was cold and he shivered under the metal shavings Ultra Magnus had left him under. He whimpered but tried not to cry. Cat would be back!

He slept again, though there was no dream-fey there; just scary darkness that didn't have pretty lights in it.

"Here he is." Prowl started awake at Ultra Magnus' voice. He heard/felt footsteps. Adults! Not just Ultra Magnus but others. Prowl tried burrowing in the shavings to hide. "Obviously he's scared the bandits will return," Ultra Magnus told the other adults before stepping closer alone. "They're here to help, little prince. Ratchet's a medic — the very best." Ultra Magnus scooped him up and started brushing the shavings off of him.

One of the other adults harrumphed. "Burying him like that invites rust."

"I know," Ultra Magnus responded, cupping the little hatchling to his chest where Prowl shivered despite the warmth. "But I had no other way of keeping him warm while I went looking for help."

"Yeah..." The gruff adult — Ratchet — sounded more tired than scolding. "Let's see him, then we'll get him back to the castle for repairs."

"Of course." Prowl wanted to ask why Cat was being so formal, but he couldn't chirp out the binary to do it. Prowl felt himself lowered so that the other adult could look at him. He blinked up at the strange white mech; a pair of blue optics blinked down at him. “I did what I could for the injuries before the fever set in.”

The medic just grunted. Gently he poked and prodded Prowl’s broken legs his bent antenna, his dented wing cases… “Nasty. But the fever’s what’ll kill him if we don’t get him back.”

“Sleep, little prince,” Magnus said soothingly, echoing oddly with the voice of the dream-fey telling him the same thing.

“He can’t hear you,” Ratchet griped.

“He can. He can always hear me.”

.

.

.

Prowl didn’t know where he was, what he was seeing. Tasting. Smelling. It felt like laying on a pile of soft scraps, but better. Like being covered in crumpled flimsies, but warmer. The touch-taste was smooth and soft and like nothing he’d ever touch-tasted before. It wasn’t anything like the dirt and sour energon smells of either Swindle’s shop or the alleys. It wasn’t like the dream-fey and the crystal spires and stars. It was like the opposite of both. Maybe a little like the soap Swindle used, but also not.

Where was Cat?

He didn’t see Cat, or the huge, still form of Ultra Magnus. Just shapes and colors he had no frame of reference to interpret.

A door — Prowl recognized the door, but only once it opened it was so shiny — opened and in it stood the strange red and white adult. Magnus had called him Ratchet, told him not to be afraid.

Adult here, but no Cat. Prowl trembled. “Cat!” he called out in binary. “Cat!”

“Here, lil’bit,” the huge form of Ultra Magnus followed Ratchet into the room. “It’s the prince’s nickname for me,” he rumbled in his big comforting voice to Ratchet. “You can’t fault him for being afraid of a stranger.” 

Ratchet’s shoulders slumped a little. “No.” He stepped over to the soft, white nest Prowl was laying on. “I fixed your injuries, your highness. You’re still slightly sick from the cold, but you should be ready to travel by tomorrow.”

Prowl blinked slowly at the adult. Did that require a response? It hadn’t sounded like a question.

“Perfect,” Ultra Magnus answered for him. “We’ll leave as soon as possible. We don’t want to inconvenience the Prime more than necessary. We are grateful.”

“This is my job,” Ratchet said gruffly. “The Prime would like for your highness to dine with him tonight. I’ll tell the servants to prepare a carriage first thing in the morning.”

“You’re too kind,” Cat said while Ratchet looked over Prowl. The two adults nodded to each other as Ratchet left, leaving Prowl alone with Cat’s armored form. “I was so scared I’d lost you, little bit. Don’t do that again.”

Prowl beeped. He was here, he was with Cat, and everything would be okay. Now they just needed a new nest of scraps to curl up in…

.

.

.

End 


End file.
